The Complaint

In 2009, a Spanish lawyer by the name of Mario Costeja complained that the results of a Google search of his name included links to legal notices dating back to 1998. The legal notices emanated from an online version of the Spanish newspaper and provided details of previous debt issues of Mr Costeja. Because the newspaper had posted these historical notices to its website, it was possible to continuously access them through the Google search engine. Mr Costeja asserted that the ongoing availability of these notices was a breach of his data protection rights.